The Anfield outfit kept up the championship pressure on their bitter North West rivals with a 3-0 win at West Ham United on Saturday.

United remain firm favourites to lift the title and stay three points clear at the top of the table.

With Liverpool not in action again until Sunday, Sir Alex Ferguson’s men can win the Premier League before then if they take four points from Wednesday’s visit to Wigan Athletic and the home game against Arsenal on Saturday.

But having beaten United both home and away this season, Benitez is convinced his squad have nothing to fear from the Old Trafford side in coming campaigns.

Asked if he believes his players are beginning to believe they are on a par with United, Benitez said: “I think so, I think in every single game we play we try to do things properly. The mood in the dressing room is good.

“We will push Manchester United to the end. We have to keep winning games and see if they make a mistake.

“The Premier League is always difficult. We have to be confident they will make a mistake. It is the Premier League and you have to have confidence in all the teams; anyone can win.

“We’ll keep training normally. You can’t have any influence on the other teams and other games, so we just have to keep doing our job.

“I think the team has shown this year that we have enough quality in the squad. But still we can improve.

“But it will still be difficult, because if you analyse the power of Chelsea, or United and Arsenal, their stadiums and the money they can spend, people will say you have also spent some money but we have to change a lot of players and still they are spending more money than us and still they have more money than us.

“It’s something that needs time but at least we are now signing players and they are settled down and we can keep adding players in the future.”

Benitez added: “If you analyse when we arrived here, the squad we had then and the squad we have now, we have better players with a very good mentality, a winning mentality and they are still improving.

“They are young players that can learn, so I think it is part of the process of when you want to change something.

“That means, for me, in the situation we have now, that we are going in the right direction, but still we have to keep improving.”

Steven Gerrard scored twice and substitute Ryan Babel added a late strike as Liverpool eased to victory at Upton Park.

Fernando Torres returned after missing last week’s win over Newcastle United with another hamstring problem.

But Benitez revealed the striker, along with Gerrard, has not been training properly.

“The hamstring is a problem for Fernando, he was working with the physios this week, but not his team-mates on the pitch,” said the Liverpool manager.

“I think next week he will be training normally with the team and hopefully will be fit for the next two games.

“Since Fernando and Gerrard didn’t train normally this week they weren’t going to be sharp. But both players are a threat and a very good influence for the team.”